Steam Australia, downloading now

Just picked up my collector's edition and put in the CD. Now after all the Steam crap I had to do it's now saying that I have to wait an hour and 25 minutes for it to update before I can play. I'm so pissed off.
I wanted to just have a fly right now and not wait until, god knows what time, before I can. Some people have to work tomorrow.
This really really really sucks.
I used Steam years ago and it sucked. Always updating something. Can someone tell me if I can fly offline against AI and how I do that. Is there a file on the CD that allows me to do it.
I should be happy at the moment. I've waited years and years for this day and now this.